


Only Fools Rush In...

by Blaze Stone (BlazeStone)



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, I like to think it's canon though, Maybe Fix-it?, Not a fix-it?, POV Minor Character, Potentially AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 11:52:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17807495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlazeStone/pseuds/Blaze%20Stone
Summary: "It had taken years. Hidden away beneath the floor panels, tucked inside disused engineering tunnels lined with humming circuit boards and wires in every colour of the rainbow lay her secret. Only parts of it were finished, and it would be a while more before it would be complete, but it was her best chance of escape yet."One-shot from Angel's POV. Written because there's a criminal lack of stories focused on and featuring Angel, not to mention the idea wouldn't leave me alone until I finished it.





	Only Fools Rush In...

It had taken years. Hidden away beneath the floor panels, tucked inside disused engineering tunnels lined with humming circuit boards and wires in every colour of the rainbow lay her secret. Only parts of it were finished, and it would be a while more before it would be complete, but it was her best chance of escape yet.

Floor panels were ridiculously easy to manipulate unless _he_ was there, and all sorts of parts go missing during repairs and upgrades; well they did in her chambers at least. If she hadn't infected all of Hyperion's digital infrastructure, she would've thought they'd notice how many parts end up disappearing but a few ledgers changed, a few numbers moved, and an embezzler or two exposed and nothing looked out of the ordinary.

_"Welcome to Pandora kiddos."_

More red filled her ledger with those words. At this point, she might as well be dripping in it, given how many bodies she'd helped **him** pile up. A large amount of them ending up in the exact same place, out in the wastes.

_He'll be stuck on his own soon enough, and then I can start living a new life, somewhere far away from Pandora. Maybe Promethea will be far enough away that Hyperion will leave me alone._

Suddenly an old program started playing audio inside her head, wrenching her attention from completing her project and to hiding it once more.

"-ake this Echo communicator that I TOTALLY didn't loot from..."

_Hold on, I recognize that Echo signature. They've been dead for years. But that means..._

"Angel, sweetie, time for you to play your part. There's- six, just wanted to make sure you have the best info I can give, vault hunters moving towards Sanctuary right now. I'll let you know more in a bit."

Manipulation requires being able to read your marks, and after reading people for so long, she knew Jack was hiding something. More than his plans, he was hiding beneath forced non-chalance and patronizing, all his telltale signs of fear. A lightbulb suddenly went off in her head, making her glad that she was supposed to look scattered for a few seconds while she rushed to do his bidding.

_Jack didn't **mean** for **all** of them to survive? Let's see who can put fear into the heart of Handsome Jack._

"and I... am here to help you."

* * *

 

Work continued at it's typical steady pace, measured in minutes per day most of the time, until a private alarm went off. Attention drawn by her new friends' distress, a curse almost escaped before her reflexes to stay undetected kicked in.

"Jack didn't send Wilhelm, did he? Please tell me Jack didn't send Wilhelm."

Even as her project was hidden away again, and her "marks" took over her focus, resentment burnt through her. Cursing was a surefire way to get caught, tripping "Parental Restrictions" alarms monitoring her chamber.

Blasting their way through loaders and surveyors, the vault hunters' guardian seraph was watching from afar, quietly weakening, slowing, and dumbing down every Hyperion robot they faced. Though with their speed and skill, it was hardly necessary and barely had time to take effect before they had moved onto the next one. Jack just had to make it a cluster-fuck.

 _At least the bastard can't monitor my thoughts with a program. Probably would if he could though_.

* * *

 

It broke her heart to betray them. The tough and ragtag group that had survived everything Jack, Hyperion, bandits or Pandora had thrown at them.

"We're not friends anymore, are we?"

 _It'll make it easier for them. In the end._ Bitterly she grimaced at herself. _Only if I don't finish in time. They're a backup plan, nothing more. Even if now they would probably enjoy it._

Hope had to be nurtured in this place. Tempered with reality, and reinforced with determination, the belief that one day she would see a sunset with actual eyes kept her going.

_Even if my first **will** only be Pandora's._

* * *

While lies form the skeleton of any decent manipulation, everyone knows that the best lies are based in truth. However that wasn't why Angel was about to bare herself so openly. It was because she had betrayed the Vault Hunters' trust, betrayed her _friends_ , and now they needed to know the truth. No matter how bad it made her look.

It sickened her to use Hyperion training to steady herself, but there would be no way she would be able to finish what she had to say unless she did. Sliding into the familiar role of cheerful but calm guide, she started from the beginning.

"Five years ago, I tricked Roland and his friends into opening the Vault."

Flashbacks of four very different Vault Hunters flashed through her mind. Atlas, bandits, eridians and gigantic vault monsters couldn't take them down.

She almost did. After betraying them, separating them, leaving Lillith alone in New Haven and passing on her echo tracker to Hyperion and Wilhelm in particular, she came the closest. Angel silently heaved fruitlessly.

"I told them it was to protect Pandora from a great evil. That was a lie. Jack knew he could make a fortune off the Eridium held within the Vault, but he was too much of a coward to open it himself. Through me, he got the Vault Hunters to do his dirty work."

Shame effectively masked, Angel continued on.

_I hate myself sometimes._

"I am so tired of manipulating people." She sighed, exhaustion leaking out of the overflowing emotional tidal wave only held in place by unbreakable conditioning.

_Time to give them a reason to kill me. Or at least come and try to._

"...I know where the key is. It's with me."

* * *

 

"Much as I hate tellin' you to listen to her," bristling with anger at the commando's scorn, only guilt and grinding teeth kept her from butting in, though it did take a few seconds to re-center herself, "...be careful."

Years of Hyperion training on manipulating assets flashed through her mind.

_Focus on the job. Guide them through until they've accomplished the mission, then you can do your part to finish the job._

Mowing through loaders, engineers and constructors alike, the vault hunters were a deadly whirlwind of bullets, steel and pain. Of course they finished their objectives in no time, which meant it was her time to shine.

"I see the files."

Haste is needed when manipulating files under Handsome Jack's nose. Especially ones that could lead to his downfall. Remixing vocal cues, extracting tonal speech patterns, adjusting software inhibitors, disabling the mountains of spy-ware and removing terrabytes of firmware designed to give Jack access to everything said or done by the user takes time. More importantly, it takes processing power, and she didn't have much to spare if she wanted to stay out of his reach. 

 _Finished! Upload.... Complete. Yes!_  

"Now, unfortunately, you will speak in Jack's voice until you reach the security door. I will tell you the password to open it at the appropriate time."

_Made it with seconds to spare. Another second or two and he would have foun-_

"AAGH!"

Getting yanked from her hiding place within the labyrinthine simulation she'd been running, the pain from Jack's "Education and Discipline Enhancers" burnt through her veins. Of course they were part of her collar, which she didn't have any access to. 

"You seriously thought you could hide from me, Angel? Is that what you thought?" 

Though his voice was filled with rage and disappointment, she could still hear deeper anger and frustration at himself for not finding her fast enough.  

_At least he didn't catch me while I was working, or they'd have a Trojan stuck in their voice modulator._

"Say goodbye to your friend, Angel. Say it." 

_Go fuck yourself, asshole._

"See you soon."

* * *

 

_Almost finished. All I need is an echo to clone a tag from, then I can hook it up to the network and I will be **free.**_

"The password is... _I love you_."

Anticipation and Eridium burned through her veins, yet after so long it almost felt natural. How twisted was that?

 _Still_ , she mused, _one way or another I will soon be free._

Never having more than a few moments at a time to work, a fast-travel station had finally been completed inside her chambers. For better or worse, she would escape this torture chamber before the day's end.

_Jack **will** lose, whether I walk out of here, or I am carried out._

* * *

 

All she had needed was a few more seconds.

Just a couple seconds more, and she could have created a new ID tag from the corrupted ones stored in the vault hunter's faulty echo device. Anyone else, and it wouldn't have been a problem. Simply copy the last read tag from a fast-travel station, clone it onto the chip she had already plugged in, and she could disappear to the middle of nowhere and detach her collar. Maybe a touch more complicated than that, but it didn't matter. The faulty echo units that had allowed the vault hunters to respawn despite Jack scrubbing their ID's from the system, one of their many minor miracles along their journey, those Echo units had sealed her fate.

No, not them or their Echo units.

Jack.

Jack had sealed her fate.

_Now I will die, and he will fall, because he refused to let me go. Because he decided to use me instead of treating me like his daughter._

As the last hose fell, the forcefield lost power and the defenses shut down, Angel's world began to fade. Onlookers crept closer as, reminiscent of the angels of old, so too did Angel drift towards the ground on her wings. Yet all Angel could feel was a permeating sense of peace, deep down to her marrow.

Eridium burned its way to her heart, leaving naught but blissfully numb veins in its wake. When the pain stopped, so would she, and that was okay. Splitting her focus, she somehow managed the impossible one last time for her friends and finished the fast-travel station that was supposed to be her escape.

Jack was watching still, and she couldn't let him know or he would block the station from the network without her protection.

"Dad, I have to tell you something."

Surrounded by them now, finally seeing them with her own eyes she saw them for who they truly were.

A commando too good at fighting for his own good. A man with honor, bravery, humour and grit in all the wrong proportions to get along with others, but just perfect for living on Pandora. Heaven's gates couldn't withstand a siege from this man, and God help the poor bastard who hits the top of his shit-list. This was a warrior, a soldier, and a fighter, in that order.

A fellow siren, but one with even more mysteries surrounding her than Angel herself. One who had her entire belief system thrown into chaos by betrayal from her caretakers and friends. Warrior queen, and elemental nightmare, this was a woman whose place was on the battlefield. Someone just looking for answers on who she was, and where she came from, though she was discovering the former already.

An assassin. Armour might hide his physical self from view, but his actions gave away his character. Honour defined him, more so than the commando, as only contracts worthy of his skill were considered, and only those targets who deserved death. Guilt can only be assumed out here if one chooses this life, and so vengeance rode swift wings to carry this reaper to his hunting ground. To where he belongs.

Gunzerker. The name fit him well. If the others belonged on Pandora, he belonged in the center of a battle. Nothing was more natural than the gunzerker in the field, weapons in hands, shells on the ground, and a smile on his face. Love of his family had started him down this path, however he continued down not from necessity, but desire. Fighting came as naturally to him as breathing does to the rest of us.

Hyperion's pet experimental psycho had come home to roost. Broken inside, bloodlust was the only word to call his insatiable desires. Pumped with experimental technology, chemicals, and conditioning, he snapped and escaped. Now he survives only in the recesses of his own mind, attempting to steer the drive for violence towards those who deserve it. On Pandora, that's usually easy enough.

A girl and her robot, perhaps the mechromancer would have gotten along with the technomancer of Angel in a different life. Burning brighter than a star, the girl was a walking ball of death with her deadly robot enforcer, mechanical arm and constant 'improvements' to both, reducing her accuracy but still leading her to be deadly in close range. Changes that made her both smarter and deadlier than any "upgrades" Hyperion had to offer.

Fading fast, Angel had one card left before her body burnt through the last drops of Eridium both poisoning and sustaining her.

_Please let my friends escape. Let them survive, and win. Let them defeat Jack and make it through unharmed._

A silent prayer before the last of her energy abandoned her.

"You're an asshole."

_Thank you my friends. For everything._

Deep within the bowels of an old Hyperion facility, a fast-travel machine that was cobbled together waits patiently for either its power to go out, or enough space to digistruct the two people whose ID tags are still stored inside. Yet the lights grow ever dimmer in the core, and the power is beginning to fail. For only fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.


End file.
